Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  "What made you turn against your vow to the Imperial Service and join the Rebels, Trooper Mingla?"

  Cray straightened up. Luke wondered where Nichos was--the cameras were focused solely on the Justice Station--and whether he was in the room with her, still held to inactivity by his restraining bolt.

  "It has yet to be established that I have done anything of the sort, Commander Kinfarg."

  The Gakfedds around Luke hooted and whistled derisively, except for those engaged in trying to prevent the half dozen Talz and the small herd of tripods from escaping the section lounge in which they sat.

  "You stupid yammerheads, you gotta watch this!" Krok was growling. "It's the Will!"

  The Talz scratched their heads, wuffled a little, and tried the other door, with much the same results. The tripods just wandered dazedly around, bumping now and then into the furniture or into the stolid ranks of the forty-five Kitonaks whom the Gamorreans had carried laboriously in, standing them like squashy, yeast-colored statues in the rear half of the lounge.

  The Gakfedds at least were taking the Will's orders that everyone watch very seriously.

  Presumably, thought Luke, the Affytechans were gathered around a screen in some other lounge. There was a good chance they'd forgotten to switch that screen on, of course, but to the Affytechans it wouldn't matter.

  "That will now be established," Kinfarg said to Cray. It was still strange beyond words to hear excellent, if colloquial and a little slurred, Basic coming out of those bestial, snouted faces.

  Behind him on the black podium screen, green letters rippled to life.

  -- You are a known associate of other Rebel spies and saboteurs -- You have assisted saboteurs on this vessel in damaging the fabric of this vessel and thus jeopardizing its mission -- You have attempted violence against officers of this vessel in the course of their rightful duties -- You were seen attempting to damage weaponry and landing vessels necessary to the completion of this mission

  "That's a lie!" cried Cray furiously. ”It's all lies! Show me one piece of evidence..."

  -- You are a known associate of other Rebel spies and saboteurs 1. Your name was given by Rebel spies taken in a raid on Algarian 2. Holograms and retina prints given by the government of Bespin after a Rebel raid match yours 3. You were taken prisoner in a raid on a group of known dissidents and troublemakers on board this vessel

  "That's a complete and absolute falsehood!" Cray was almost in tears of fury. "Not a single one of those allegations is correct, nor are they backed up with evidence--”

  "Shut up, trooper!" Kinfarg struck her again, with the same casual violence as before, though Cray saw it coming and rolled with it this time. ”'Course there's evidence. Wouldn't be in the computer without evidence."

  "I insist that the evidence be presented!"

  Luke closed his eyes. He knew what was coming.

  When he opened them again he saw that the Justice Station's screen had blandly displayed a screenwide and infinitesimally tiny reproduction of forms, reports, finger- and retina-print dupes, and tiny holo screens of Cray's image and the images of various "Rebels" talking in minute, tinny voices about Cray's involvement in Rebel activities.

  "A computer simulation isn't evidence!" Cray shouted. "I can program a simulation like that with my eyes shut! I demand that counsel be provided for me--”

  "You kidding, trooper?" demanded Kinfarg. He'd cut the face out of a white stormtrooper helmet and wore the cranium of it on the back of his head, the face on his chest like a bizarre skull mask. The effect was, against all probability, chilling. "No decent counsel's so disloyal he'd defend a known Rebel. What you want us to do?" He chuckled thickly. "Get a Rebel to come and defend you?"

  The Justice Station's screen wiped. Then green lines of letters flickered in:

  -- "All military offensives shall be considered under law as states of emergency, and subject to the emergency military powers act of the Senate."

  Senatorial Amendment to Constitutions of New Order Decree 77-92465-001

  -- "Without necessary capital powers it is considered impossible to maintain the stability of the New Order and the security of the greatest number of civilizations in the galaxy."

  Capital Powers Act Preface, Section II

  "What am I supposed to do?" retorted Cray furiously. "Fall on my knees and confess?"

  -- Standing confession will suffice

  "Like hell I will, you rusted-out pile of scrap!"

  Luke wanted to leave, but knew he could not, even if the Gakfedds would let him. He had come not only to make sure Cray was still alive and more or less well, but to observe the background for clues, to look for whatever hints he could find as to where the Klaggs might be. Apprehension turned him cold as the Justice Station's screen flashed the new message, -- In view of the prisoner's intransigence, sentencing will take place tomorrow at 1200 hours. All personnel are required to assemble to view sentencing. Absence from viewing lounge will be construed as sympathy with the ill intentions of the prisoner.

  The screen went dark.

  "Find out anything?" Luke leaned his shoulder against the wall, watching the stolid, bronze-colored SP-80 plod a few meters down the corridor and resume its sponging of the walls in a new spot.

  Had C-3PO possessed lungs, he would have produced a martyr's sigh. "Master Luke, I did try. Indeed I did. And far be it from me to disparage the programming of Single-Purpose units, because what they do, they do admirably well. But as I said, they are limited."

  "Is there any way we can change their programming?" Luke scratched his cheek; he was beginning to get the fair, almost invisible brown stubble of a beard, itchy in the scars the snow creature had long ago left. "Program them to seek out Gamorreans--by the smell probably-r than spots on the walls?"

  "I expect when they attempted to wash the Gamorreans they found their functioning would cease in short order," reflected Threepio. "And we're already surrounded by Gamorreans."

  "Not if we went up to Deck Eighteen or higher," said Luke. Threepio's search of Deck 17 had yielded him no more than Luke's investigation of the Detention Block and its vicinity, though Threepio, like Luke, had encountered many blast shields and doors that simply would not open. Luke wondered if these concealed classified areas, or if the Will was trying to herd Threepio as it had herded him. "Could you program an SP to find Gamorreans on one of those decks, so that we could simply follow it? Can their long-range sensors be extended that far?"

  "Of course," replied the droid. "That's brilliant, Master Luke! Absolutely brilliant! It would take a minimum of--”

  "You!"

  Luke spun. Ugbuz stood behind him, drool dripping from his heavy snout, staring at him with flinty suspicion in his gaze.

  "You're the friend of that Rebel saboteur, aren't you?"

  Luke's fingers traced the small circle of focus, gathering the Force to his soft voice. "No," he said quietly. "That was somebody else. I never was near her."

  Ugbuz frowned, as if trying to match two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in his mind. ”Oh." He turned and started back for the door of the lounge--the Talz were wandering out, wuffing to one another and shaking their soft white heads, heading en masse for the mess hall a few doors down. Then he turned back.

  "But you was the kid who stopped us questioning that saboteur?"

  "No," said Luke, drawing the Force about him, projecting it into Ugbuz's limited--and rather divided--mind. He found that even this small and simple exercise was difficult under the effects of pain and fatigue. "That was someone else also."

  "Oh." Ugbuz's frown deepened. "The Will says there's something going on on this ship."

  "There is," Luke agreed. "But none of it has anything to do with me."

  "Oh. Okay." He disappeared back into the lounge, but in the doorway Luke saw him turn and glance back over his shoulder as if puzzling about edges that did not match.

  Just what I needed, thought Luke. Something else to worry about.

  "Let's go," he said so
ftly. "I want to reprogram one of the SP'S on Deck Eighteen, and there's something else I want to try up on Deck Fifteen."

  "Great galaxies, Captain, there's hundreds of them!" The Affytechan second-in-command swung away from the blank screen--they were in the central lounge of Deck 15 this time, bent intently over the dead consoles of games and visi-readers--and fluttered all its tendrils and ramifications in horror. "They were lying in wait for us behind every asteroid in the field!"

  "Gunnery! What's our status?" It was a different captain, ligulate, delicious pink grading into magenta, and extravagant with stalks and tassels. The former captain was in charge of a glitterball console at the far end of the lounge.

  "Down to fifty percent, Captain," reported a tubulate mass of azure and periwinkle. "But we've still got enough juice to make 'em think twice!"

  "That's the spirit, men!" cried the captain. "We'll have 'em yelling for their mothers before we're through. Can I help you?" The captain's lacy florets all turned in Luke's direction as Luke and Threepio approached the two chairs, piled one atop the other, which constituted the makeshift bridge.

  "Major Calrissian, Special Services." Luke saluted, a gesture the captain returned smartly. Though all the screens and consoles were dead--including, Luke suspected, the main viewer on which the Affytechans had supposedly watched Cray's trial--at least the lights still worked. Luke couldn't be sure, but he thought there were more Affytechans than there had been before.

  "New assignment, sir, which supersedes all previous orders." As Luke spoke he collected the Force, projected it into the mind--if there was a mind--within that mass of color and fluff.

  "There's been a minor malfunction of the schematics library. Sabotage, we think. Nothing to worry about, but we need to know the location and status of all transport craft on board. It's a tough assignment--dangerous." Luke made his face grave. "I'd hesitate passing it on to inexperienced men, but you...Well, you're the best we have. Think you can handle it?"

  The captain sprang down from his chair, a good meter and a half to the floor, and returned Luke's salute again. Whatever creatures the Affytechans relied upon for cross-pollination, they clearly found some rather strange enzymes appealing; the Affytechans, especially when they moved quickly, gave off an amazing galaxy of stenches, acrid, ammoniac, or gluily musky. In the damaged air-conditioning of the Deck 15 lounge the effect was overpowering.

  "You can count on us, Major. Men..."

  The Affytechans abandoned the battle midmaneuver and lined up in the center of the lounge, standing at rigid attention while their captain outlined the assignment and gave them a pep talk worthy of the great general Hyndis Raithal herself.

  "It never ceases to amaze me, sir," said Threepio, as the exuberant crew streamed out of the lounge, "the ingenuity of the human species. Say what she will--and I certainly intend no criticism of either Dr. Mingla or her preceptors--I have never yet encountered a droid program capable of the kind of lateral thinking one sees in human beings."

  "Let's hope not," said Luke quietly. "Because a droid program--an artificial intelligence--is exactly what we're up against in this ship."

  They walked in silence for a time toward the laundry drop where the repair shaft rose to take them to Deck 18. While waiting for Cray's trial Threepio had changed the dressings of the ax wound on Luke's leg, and though the infection seemed to be contained, Luke thought the pain was getting worse again.

  "I have observed, sir," Threepio said after a time, "that since Nichos's... transformation"--it was extremely rare for Threepio to hesitate over a word--"he and I have a great deal more in common than we ever did when he was... as he was before. He was always a pleasant and likable human being, but now he is much less humanly unpredictable, if you will pardon me for expressing a purely subjective opinion based on incomplete data. I can only trust and hope that Dr. Mingla finds this a benefit."

  Trust and hope, thought Luke. Grammatical constructs programmed into Threepio's language to make it more human... but he knew that the pessimistic droid did not, in fact, either trust or hope anything. He wondered if Nichos did, anymore.

  "Come on," he said quietly. "Let's find an SP and see if you can convince it to become a tracker."

  Luke had been surrounded by droids all his life, had grown up with them on his uncle's farm. As Threepio said, they were excellent at what they were, but unlike humans what they were not, they were not, one hundred percent. And Cray, wherever she was, was finding this out in the cruelest possible way.

  He only hoped he could reach her in time.

  The area of Deck 18 immediately surrounding the laundry drop to which the repair shaft led them was high-ceilinged, almost twice the height of other decks. The walls were of the same dark gray Luke had seen in the background of both the Klagg village and the Justice Chamber. A short distance beyond the laundry drop, the corridors were utterly lightless; hatches and wall panels gaped open, spewing cables and wires like the entrails of gutted beasts. Luke didn't need to see the dirty fingermarks all around them to guess who was responsible.

  An SP-80 was doggedly removing the fingermarks. It didn't pause when Luke flipped open the coverplate in its side and plugged in the comm cable from the droud in the back of Threepio's cranium. Over the course of the years back on Tatooine Uncle Owen had owned at least five different SP'S that Luke could remember, and by the time he was fourteen Luke had been able to break down, clean, repair, refit, and reassemble one in four hours. Reprogramming from a translator droid that already had access to biocodes and serial indexes was candy.

  The SP plodded off down the corridor almost before Luke had the cable out of it; he had to pace it to shut the coverplate. It still held its cleaner arm and vacuum absorption pad straight out in front of it, and for some reason Luke was reminded of the Kitonaks, patiently waiting for Chooba slugs to crawl to them across thousands of light-years of hyperspace and into their open mouths.

  "Does it scent the Klaggs on this deck, d'you think?" asked Luke softly, limping in the SP'S slow wake with Threepio clicking along at his side. "Or would it pick them up on the downdraft from a gangway?"

  "Oh, the sensory mechanism of a cleaner SP is quite capable of detecting grease molecules in a concentration of less than ten thousand per square centimeter, in an area of a quarter of a square centimeter, at a distance of a hundred meters or more."

  "Biggs's mother could do that," remarked Luke.

  Threepio was silent for a moment. "With all due respect to Mrs. Biggs, sir, I understand that even if a human is born with an exceptional olfactory center in the brain, it requires a Magrody implant and extensive childhood training to develop such a skill, though among the Chadra-Fan and the Ortolans such abilities are quite commonplace."

  "Joke," said Luke gravely. "That was a joke."

  "Ah," said Threepio. "Indeed."

  The SP halted before a closed blast shield that blocked the hall. Luke stepped forward and palmed the opener, without result. "Really, Master Luke, there are times when I almost agree with Ugbuz's attitude toward the Jawas," said Threepio, as the SP'S four small sensor pits curved and shifted this way and that and streams of yellow numbers fidgeted across its readout. Then it turned, with great deliberation, backtracked to a cross-corridor a few meters behind them, turned right, and continued through the maze of shut doors and dark, cavernous storage hulls.

  Luke said nothing, but the hair on his nape prickled with the sensation of being watched, observed from the darkness. Jawas? He might not have an SP-80'S olfactory detectors but he'd know if Jawas were around. Ditto for Sand People.

  This was something else.

  Another blast door. The SP recalibrated, changed course, through a holding area filled with gutted packing containers whose contents--regular navy helmets, coveralls, gray-green half-armor, and blankets--strewed the floor. Pieces of the containers themselves were gone; Luke noted that those that remained were labeled Sorosub Imports. The walls here were dark in the bobbing light of Luke's staff, and looked un
finished, with rafters stretching bare overhead and bolt ends glinting in the shadows. The door into a repair bay stood open. Luke glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the corridor entrance, through which they had come moments before, was shut now.

  The Will, he thought. It's herding us. Pushing us the way it wants us to go.

  Clanking softly, the SP-80 turned down a long corridor on the starboard side of the ship. Though no damage by Jawas was evident, the lights were gone here, too, and as he and Threepio drew farther from the lighted area and the reflections of its glow got dimmer and dimmer, Luke sensed ever more strongly the presence of an unknown, watching entity. He kept as close to Threepio as he could, matching his halting stride to the droid's and making sure there was never a space between them when they passed under the periodic blast doors.

  The SP-80 turned a corner. A stair led up into pitchy night. Luke heard the hiss-whirr-tap of its short legs negotiating the stairs of a gangway and extended his arm sharply to stop Threepio from following it, feeling only the horrible inner prickling sensation of a trap.

  He held out his staff with its dimly shining glowrods toward the square opening of the stairs. The light was flung back by dim strips of opalescent material, thick and thin alternating in a strange not-quite-pattern, vanishing upward into the dark.

  Luke looked up. The ceiling of the gangway was dotted with the cold pearly squares of the more usual form of enclision grid.

  The SP ascended, unharmed, out of his sight.

  "Good heavens." Threepio stepped closer to the door. "It's definitely some sort of enclision grid, sir. But obviously deactivated. Possibly the Jawas--”

  "No." Luke leaned against the wall, his leg beginning to throb burningly as the first relief of the perigen wore off. "No, the Will wouldn't have herded us to a gangway that was disa4. It's just waiting until we're too far up to turn back."

  Slowly, the heavy, mechanical stride of the SP droid faded. In the darkness, the weight of the ship seemed to press on them, waiting for them to follow it up the wired stair. Luke hurried his stride as much as he could to get back to the area of the lights.